▸ Legs

Groin and Back Stretch

Adductors

intermediate · compound · stretching

Sit with the soles of your feet together, fingers laced behind your head, then curl down and drive your elbows toward the inside of your knees before returning tall. The elbows are the tool: they push the knees outward and open the groin while your spine gets a controlled flexion cycle in the same rep.

▸ How to

Own the movement

Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.

Before the first rep

Sit on the floor, bend both knees and bring the soles of your feet together, heels drawn in toward you.
Sit up on your sit bones, not slumped back onto your tailbone — put a folded towel under your backside if that is hard.
Lace your fingers behind your head with elbows wide, not pulling on your neck.
Let the knees hang where they naturally fall before the first rep; do not force them down at the start.

Every rep

Curl down slowly, leading with the sternum, so the spine rounds one segment at a time rather than folding at the hips.

Bring the elbows to the inside of the thighs and press gently outward to widen the knees.

Pause for one or two seconds at the bottom with the elbows applying steady pressure — no bouncing.

Return to tall and upright with the head up and the back straight, restacking rather than throwing yourself back.

Repeat for 10-20 reps at roughly three seconds down and three seconds up.

Breathing & tempo — Exhale as you curl down, inhale as you sit back up. Three seconds each way with a one-to-two-second pause at the bottom, breathing out fully into the pressure from your elbows.

▸ Programming

How much, how often

Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.

No external load; the elbows against your thighs are the only pressure and you control it directly. Two sets of 10-20 reps at a three-second tempo, or one longer set if you are using it as a desk break. Frequency beats intensity for range — five short sessions a week outperform one long one.

▸ Fix your form

What goes wrong

The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.

Pulling on the back of the head with the laced hands to get lower.

Rest the hands on the skull with no pull and keep the elbows wide. Your neck should feel nothing here; if it does, unlace the hands and cross your arms on your chest instead.

Bouncing the elbows against the knees to force them down.

Apply steady pressure for one or two seconds and release. Bouncing at end range triggers a protective contraction in the adductors, so you end up with less range than you started with.

Slumping onto the tailbone so the whole thing becomes a slouch.

Sit on the edge of a folded towel or a yoga block to tip the pelvis forward. From there you can find the tall start position, and only then is the curl worth doing.

Racing through the reps as if it were a sit-up.

Three seconds down, a pause, three seconds up. There is no load to resist and no strength to gain — the whole value is in the time the tissue spends in the position.

▸ The case for it

Why bother

A butterfly position on its own stalls quickly — the knees hang wherever gravity leaves them. Bringing laced hands behind your head and curling forward lets your elbows press the inside of the thighs outward, which adds abduction to the adductor stretch instead of just waiting for the hips to give.

The second half is a spinal one. Curling down and returning to a tall seated position takes the lumbar and thoracic spine through flexion and back to neutral under no load at all, which is a useful thing to own if you spend eight hours a day parked in one fixed seated angle. It is mobility work, not core training — there is nothing to resist.

Where it fits

As a warm-up before lower-body training, or as a desk break: 10-20 slow reps. It is one of the few groin drills needing no partner, no roller and no floor space beyond your own sitting area, which is exactly what makes it the one people will actually repeat.

▸ Swap it out

If this one isn't it

No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.

▸ Questions

Asked and answered

My knees stay high no matter how much I press. Is something wrong?

Usually not. How far the knees drop is largely down to hip socket shape, which you cannot stretch. Judge progress by whether you can sit tall with a neutral pelvis and feel a stretch in the inner thigh — not by how close your knees get to the floor. Some people never get there and lose nothing for it.

Is this a stretch or an ab exercise?

A stretch, despite looking like a crunch. There is no resistance to the spinal flexion, so it builds no strength. The curl exists to bring your elbows to your knees; treat it as mobility work and train the abs separately.

Should I do it before or after lifting?

Either works, because the holds are short and dynamic rather than a long static end-range stretch. If you are about to squat wide or deadlift sumo, use it in the warm-up — the repeated curl is closer to dynamic work than to the two-minute static holds that can blunt force production.

How is this different from just sitting in a butterfly stretch?

The elbows. A passive butterfly leaves the knees wherever gravity puts them and stops progressing after about a week. Pressing outward with the elbows on each rep gives you a dial you can turn, and the curl-and-return adds a spinal flexion cycle a static butterfly does not touch.